BOULDER -- When the Colorado Legislature convenes in January, Boulder County will support proposals for state laws that recognize, preserve and expand local governments' authority to regulate the oil and gas industry's land-use activities.

That's one of the policy priorities the Board of County Commissioners will be pursuing during the Colorado General Assembly's 2013 session.

State laws should be amended to clarify that any state regulations relating to oil and gas development should be regarded to be "minimum standards," according to Boulder County commissioners' legislative agenda.

Under that approach, counties and municipalities could modify or strengthen the state's oil and gas regulations "to address local concerns and conditions," Boulder County's commissioners have stated.

Such laws are among a multitude of measures Boulder County intends to pursue during next year's session, under the 2013 state legislative agenda that Commissioners Cindy Domenico, Will Toor and Deb Gardner adopted Thursday morning.

The more than 40-page document also lists positions the commissioners have taken on such issues as community health, environmental health, community justice, economic opportunity, housing, human services, transportation, immigration and human rights.

But oil and gas issues dominated much of the commissioners' attention Thursday. Later that afternoon, they approved Land Use Code provisions that will update 19-year-old regulations about drilling and operating oil and gas wells in unincorporated parts of the county.

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When Boulder County begins applying its new oil and gas rules next year, they'll be stricter than any other Colorado county's, commissioners contended in a Thursday night news release.

Boulder County commissioners also have written Gov. John Hickenlooper asking that the state drop its lawsuit against Longmont over the drilling restrictions the City Council adopted last summer.

Local concerns, the county commissioners said, are also why they've sought stricter Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission rules about water quality monitoring near oil and gas wells and how far such wells have to be set back from homes and other buildings.

The 2013 legislative agenda says that state laws and policies need to address the impacts that oil and gas operations have on air and water quality.

Hydraulic fracturing -- the process of injecting sand, water and chemicals to free up underground fossil-fuel deposits -- as well as the other impacts of drilling and operating oil and gas wells can include "air toxin and volatile organic compound emissions close to population centers; surface water and shallow groundwater contamination from abandoned or improperly lined ponds that hold brine and fracking water; and dust resulting from the use of silicates," according to the commissioners' legislative agenda.

"Boulder County supports legislative and other efforts to address these and other impacts, using an approach that appropriately balances public health and regulation," the document says.

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